Also, "The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and iOS 9 all pushed developers in the direction of resolution-dependent apps"

seems to me it should be "resolution independent"

Also, might want to double check this sentence and clarify:

Quote:

That list starts with DCI-P3 color gamut support (new in the 12.9-inch Pro, returning to the smaller one) and an anti-reflective coating, features also present in recent iMacs and MacBook Pros. But the True Tone feature, which detects the color temperature of the ambient light and adjusts the display’s color temperature to match. Most significantly, the iPad’s refresh rate has been bumped up to 120Hz, twice the normal 60Hz. The screens in the iPad Pros are the best screens Apple ships, which is appropriate for a thing that’s just a giant screen by design.

A mouse would be amazing on iPad for app-specific scenarios like remoting into a PC. Or just put a damn trackpad on the keyboard so you don't have to awkwardly tap at a vertically oriented screen.

Definitely one of the next elements they should have to be a more complete laptop replacement. iOS 12 at the earliest now?

The issue is do you now display an on screen pointer on iOS? It's a rather big change and I think Apple will think carefully before they add it.

It seems that the solution to that issue is to make it work like pointers have always worked in Mac OS: the pointer becomes visible only if an external pointing device is attached and active. After a period of inactivity, or if the touchscreen or the keyboard is used, the pointer vanishes and you have to wiggle the device for a split second for it to reappear.

The harder part is Apple designing an appropriate "external pointing device." I don't know what it would look like, though I do know that it shouldn't resemble the touchpad on Surface Pro's keyboard cover.

The harder part is Apple designing an appropriate "external pointing device." I don't know what it would look like, though I do know that it shouldn't resemble the touchpad on Surface Pro's keyboard cover.

Why, will some nerds online will whine about copying surface pro?

Worrying about whiny nerds, seems like a terrible input into product development.

It should work with BT mice and they should have a trackpad on keyboards eventually. Apple makes the best trackpads in the business.

With a fourth core and the caches/bandwidth to sustain it, this would totally keep up! A 47 watt 4C/8T CPU from just a few years ago, now in a fanless ARM chip. That's nutty. Some people are understandably frustrated at the lack of performance gains in the high wattage segment, but where there are still big gains is bringing more power down to lower wattages.

It also seems to be a pretty fair foil for the 1499 Macbook Escape in the review charts, Intel must be watching that closely.

I /really/ want to see what an A10X could do with a heatsink and fan...

The premise that a CPU with lower power draw with larger transistors and less cache is the dominant performer across all tasks is absurd, and should be treated as absurd.

I think they would have moved the iPad Pro to running both MacOS and iOS software if it was *that* powerful. Also on board with the "it needs mouse support" crowd. In it's current iteration, the iPad Pro is just trying to get artists wanting a portable Cintiq + tablet back from the Surface Pro line. It's otherwise by definition, not a productivity device.

Not sure if I missed it somewhere and can't seem to find it from Google search - does the new 10.5" iPad Pro have 3D Touch?

It doesn’t. Perhaps they can’t get it working well yet without compromises on larger-than-iPhone sized screens.

I'm pretty sure that 3D touch on the iPhone was only there in preparation for the new buttonless iPhone (with the full screen then being both home button and fingerprint sensor). It has never been used for anything that couldn't be done with a long press anyway.

I honestly don't understand who the iPad Pro 10.5 inch is for. Professionals who need it for work would use a laptop, or a PC or a Macbook to get things done. People who want it for entertainment has significantly cheaper options and no real use for the keyboard or stylus. The only people I can imagine using this are maybe artists who are using this as a replacement for a Wacom pad, but that's a pretty narrow niche.

Well, let me help you there. I have the iPad Pro 12 and use it for *everything* except one specialty program (accounting software) that has never ported an app version. I do a lot of writing, and, thanks to Ulysses (just a user here, no connection to the company) and the Smart Keyboard, my writing needs are fulfilled.

Numbers is still behind the OS version, but it is catching up quickly. Since I use numbers for simpler spreadsheet activities, this is no obstacle. Because I have zero artistic ability and atrocious handwriting, I have yet to see a need for the pencil. My wife, the artist, however, is eyeing one for her inevitable iPad Pro acquisition.

Best reason for me is the easy handling and light weight of the iPad, which means I take it with me everywhere. And, because I read all my books on the iPad, these older eyes appreciate the larger size.

512GB on an iPad isn't easy to backup and if you're using them for content creation then there definitely needs to be a backup system.

1. To Apple's shame, Time Machine doesn't backup iPads [...]

2. Backing up with iTunes would be an exercise in tedium, tethers the iPad, and isn't automatic. You also need to back up to a large attached HDD, as this will blow away most SSDs, thus taking even longer to scan and backup.

So much for local backups.

Astonishing how hell-bent people are on bashing Apple — so much so that they don't just disregard reality, they disregard reality within their own comments.

You're saying that backing up your iPad to a hard drive is impossible, or a non-existant option because you find hard drive technology to be too slow. Apple should be *ashamed*, no less, that they don't give you free cloud-based backups, presumably for the rest of yours, or your iPad's life.

If you were talking about any other company, I'd think you were joking.

You seem to be off by 10 cores here, I see 12 cores for this model wherever I look. 24 virtual threads, but 12 cores.

3x the performance with its slightly lower clock with 4x the cores sounds a lot more reasonable than the tale you've been spinning with 22 cores, bearing in mind bandwidth contention, Amdahl's law, etc.

It's exactly where one would reasonably expect the performances to fall, really.

Are you being purposely disingenuous or are you just incompetent? The second result on google searching for takes you to Intel ARK which clearly shows it being 22 cores. I'm struggling to rationalise how you could accidentally make this mistake.

2. Backing up with iTunes would be an exercise in tedium, tethers the iPad, and isn't automatic. You also need to back up to a large attached HDD, as this will blow away most SSDs, thus taking even longer to scan and backup.

It's absolutely not an exercise in tedium.

It’s actually quite easy to backup to a computer with which you aren’t synced/tethered. My iPhone backs up to the cloud, but when I want to make a local copy, all I do is plug it into to my computer, and click “backup now” under “Manually Backup and Restore”

Simple as that. This can also be configured to happen over the network.

To someone who already owns a MacBook (not MBP), what is the benefit from the iPad Pro, apart from the pencil/touchscreen? At this stage, the MacBook is almost the same size (easy to carry around anywhere and use on a plane) and you get the benefit of all the "full" versions of the software. As a non-creative professional who sees the pencil as a nice to have and non-essential, is there a benefit to an iPad Pro

2. Backing up with iTunes would be an exercise in tedium, tethers the iPad, and isn't automatic. You also need to back up to a large attached HDD, as this will blow away most SSDs, thus taking even longer to scan and backup.

It's absolutely not an exercise in tedium.

It’s actually quite easy to backup to a computer with which you aren’t synced/tethered. My iPhone backs up to the cloud, but when I want to make a local copy, all I do is plug it into to my computer, and click “backup now” under “Manually Backup and Restore”

Simple as that. This can also be configured to happen over the network.

Manual backup on a Pro device? I think you're missing the point.

Secondly, anyone who *still* trusts itunes not to randomly wipe their device at some point is on very thin ice.

2. Backing up with iTunes would be an exercise in tedium, tethers the iPad, and isn't automatic. You also need to back up to a large attached HDD, as this will blow away most SSDs, thus taking even longer to scan and backup.

It's absolutely not an exercise in tedium.

It’s actually quite easy to backup to a computer with which you aren’t synced/tethered. My iPhone backs up to the cloud, but when I want to make a local copy, all I do is plug it into to my computer, and click “backup now” under “Manually Backup and Restore”

Simple as that. This can also be configured to happen over the network.

Manual backup on a Pro device? I think you're missing the point.

Secondly, anyone who *still* trusts itunes not to randomly wipe their device at some point is on very thin ice.

Can you point to any examples, in say the past five years (or ever), of iTunes wiping someones device?

Can we please stop using iOS, MacOS, and Windows versions of Geekbench like they are somehow interchangeable? Its different codebases and the results are NOT comparable.

Run LINpack on that SoC and see if it really has more floating point performance than a mobile i7 like you seem to be saying.

They are entirely and directly comparable. The code and tasks are exactly the same -- only the compiler and standard libraries are different.

And if you're not convinced, there's platform agnostic javascript benchmarks that also show Apple cleaning Intel's clock.

a) Geekbench has never proven than a score in x86 is directly translatable to a score on iOS. If they have (showing LINPack or SPECint results that correlate directly with Geekbench scores) I missed it and I cannot find it.

b) Compiler differences make ALL the difference. Leaves them with different codebases.

c) Javascript benchmarks are literally the opposite of "Platform agnostic" since they have 2 platform differences instead of just one (OS + Browser instead of just OS).

Thanks for trying.

So is your argument then that it's actually Apple's compiler and webkit teams that are totally dominating Google and Microsoft, rather than Apple's silicon teams totally dominating Qualcomm and Intel?

Ultimately this sort of thing boils down to what the question is. If the question is "Who has the best general purpose CPU?" then you're right -- you can't answer that question without holding all else constant. But if the question is "who makes the fastest computer?" (or fastest smartphone/tablet), then a different comparison is in order -- one which does include real-world variation in compilers, web browsers, etc. Stated differently -- you can't use Apple compilers on Android phones and PCs, you can't run Safari on them either, so it doesn't really matter if the performance advantages for Apple's platforms come from hardware, software, or both. The bottom line is, it's faster.

I've been eye-ing the new Surface Pro, and thought that perhaps the new iPad Pros might be competitive, but it seems like it would be very difficult, even with the new version of iOS, to do productive development on an iPad Pro.

I think I need more of a full blown general purpose desktop environment that's a passable tablet. It seems like the iPad is a full blown tablet that's a passable to poor desktop environment.

The Surface fails as a tablet due to it's lack of touch based software.

That's why Microsoft created (and abandoned) an Android app runtime and a way to make porting iOS software to Windows easier.

They know full well that you can't be a real tablet without a huge selection of touch based software.

The Android runtime was meant for Windows Phone/Mobile, not for regular Windows.

I hope this review is revisited when iOS 11 is released. It's such a game changer software wise that I'm sure it will impact this devise immensely.

For instance: Metal 2. If Metal 2 is as good as Apple says it is, then any Metal app should absolutely fly. Lots of people bash Apple for using Metal instead of Vulkan or OpenGL, but if Metal is 40 percent faster, say, than either of them... wouldn't that be good to know? Especially since Apple is building most of the silicon and has moved away for their current supplier, Imagination.

Anything about that? If the GPU is mostly custom, written with Metal in mind, it may very well extend Apple's lead in power over Samsung/Qualcomm devices.

With a fourth core and the caches/bandwidth to sustain it, this would totally keep up! A 47 watt 4C/8T CPU from just a few years ago, now in a fanless ARM chip. That's nutty. Some people are understandably frustrated at the lack of performance gains in the high wattage segment, but where there are still big gains is bringing more power down to lower wattages.

It also seems to be a pretty fair foil for the 1499 Macbook Escape in the review charts, Intel must be watching that closely.

I /really/ want to see what an A10X could do with a heatsink and fan...

The premise that a CPU with lower power draw with larger transistors and less cache is the dominant performer across all tasks is absurd, and should be treated as absurd.

I think they would have moved the iPad Pro to running both MacOS and iOS software if it was *that* powerful. Also on board with the "it needs mouse support" crowd. In it's current iteration, the iPad Pro is just trying to get artists wanting a portable Cintiq + tablet back from the Surface Pro line. It's otherwise by definition, not a productivity device.

This is a silly analysis.

The ESSENTIAL difference between Mac and iOS is not the CPUs, or even the legacy software, it is that one presents a UI for indirect manpulation, one presents a UI for direct manipulation. That's the state of play right now, and given that fact, it makes no sense to run Mac software on an iPad -- it's like asking why HomePod can't run Apple TV apps.

+ MacOS likely will also switch to a new OS qua OS. The underlying OS really is starting to show its age (in things like how bad hardware can bring down the entire machine, in the way that multi-core can be used in only limited ways, in the security model). My guess is the work for this is being done today, but the ARM transition will happen first. Then a few years after the ARM transition the new OS (likely ARM-only) will be rolled out as the baseline OS-proper for the entire product line/

+ But neither of these address the issue of the UI. My guess is that Apple hasn't made a decision yet because the future is murky.

Clearly there ARE some tasks where direct manipulation feels far better and more appropriate than indirect manipulation. iOS for the win.

Just as clearly there ARE some tasks where indirect manipulation (and/or multiple large windows and multiple screens) are more or less essential. (Text entry on iOS is OK, text selection and editing suck. Some tasks, like large spread screens, or serious coding, a lot of video or 3D editing, or research+writing REALLY benefit from windows+large screens, and those in turn really need the indirect manipulation to avoid gorilla arm.)

Can these be unified? Can this be done without forcing the dev to write two different UIs? Can we get to where we want to be through something like an iPad Max (hah hah, pun!) that presents the direct manipulation UI in tablet mode, but can be plugged into three screens, and then presents windows like a Mac, and allows the use of a keyboard and track pad --- support for pointer, clicking, dragging, chording, all done automatically by the Apple frameworks and controls?MS is not an encouraging precedent. But then MS does lots of UI things badly and others then do them better...

HOWEVER all this may be moot! And that's why I say the future is murky.How serious is VR/AR? How soon does it arrive? For how long can one wear the relevant headgear (battery life? weight? eye strain? dorkiness around other people?)There ARE those (including serious companies) who believe that VR is SO all-encompassing that all this nonsense today of touch screens and trackpads is all going away soon, that the only way we'll be interacting with anything computation is via some form of VR/AR. I personally STRONGLY discount these sorts of claims. Almost always new technology AUGMENTS, it does not REPLACE, older technology. (Compare claims that tablets would replace desktops, watches replace phones, voice replace touch --- all idiotic.) So I see the intermediate (next 15..30 years or so) future as making use of everything from keyboards to touchscreens to voice to goggles all in appropriate situations.

But that doesn't change the fact that VR/AR UIs will be a whole new and very different space that Apple needs to explore. And if this UI method works well, and is as powerful as claimed, perfecting eyeOS make take all of Apple's best talent for the next few years, leaving little available to work in the near term on the question of the optimal balance and unification between direct and indirect manipulation. Which implies a short term future that's essentially like the past few years --- the best UI ideas that make sense move between macOS and iOS, but there's no grand theory of how they should be unified.

You seem to be off by 10 cores here, I see 12 cores for this model wherever I look. 24 virtual threads, but 12 cores.

3x the performance with its slightly lower clock with 4x the cores sounds a lot more reasonable than the tale you've been spinning with 22 cores, bearing in mind bandwidth contention, Amdahl's law, etc.

It's exactly where one would reasonably expect the performances to fall, really.

Are you being purposely disingenuous or are you just incompetent? The second result on google searching for takes you to Intel ARK which clearly shows it being 22 cores. I'm struggling to rationalise how you could accidentally make this mistake.

I'm all kinds of confused. Thanks Intel! If you go to ARK, the listed 22-core v4 Xeons are:

E7-8880 v4E5-4669 v4E5-2699A v4E5-2699R v4E5-2699 V4

They have MSRPs ranging from $4500 to $7000.

Can't find an E5-2696 v4 on ARK at all. So, either Intel doesn't have such a processor yet, the various websites are misidentifying a Xeon (this would not surprise me), or someone fat-fingered an E5-2699 v4 (this would not be surprising). The "v4" is important, because the E5-2699 v3 has 18 cores. For additional confusion, the E5-2697A v4 has 16 cores, the E5-2697 v4 (no "A") has 18 cores, and the E5-2595 v4 has 18 cores.

I've been eye-ing the new Surface Pro, and thought that perhaps the new iPad Pros might be competitive, but it seems like it would be very difficult, even with the new version of iOS, to do productive development on an iPad Pro.

I think I need more of a full blown general purpose desktop environment that's a passable tablet. It seems like the iPad is a full blown tablet that's a passable to poor desktop environment.

I'd bet that before too long, development will be available on the iPad Pro. It looks as though there sidling up to it. I expect to see XCode 9 on the Pro late this year, or next year.

The Surface Pro is very different. It's really just a flat Windows machine. If that's what you want, then it's fine for that. But you really need to have the $999 i5 version, and not the much weaker $799 version, which I suspect is in the line just so that Microsoft can state that it begins at $799.

That makes it a much more expensive decision. If you're a Windows person, then I suppose the Surface Pro makes more sense. But if you're looking for a more easily managed solution, and are willing to move away from Windows, or even, to a lesser extent, MacOS, then the iPad Pro makes more sense.

Christ, some people will do some absolute backflips to convince themselves Apple's SoCs can't really be THAT good.

It's not that, it's just with the OG "Pro" Anandtech found the Apple SoC to trail the first gen Macbook's Broadwell Core M. That's not bad, the Apple chip is "desktop class" as it trounced Atoms and traded blows with Core M. However, it was not faster as that version of Geekbench seemed to indicate.

If Anandtech would be so nice as to repeat the extensive comparison again, it's not unlikely that we'll find Geekbench numbers again slightly "biased by design" towards ARM.

2. Backing up with iTunes would be an exercise in tedium, tethers the iPad, and isn't automatic. You also need to back up to a large attached HDD, as this will blow away most SSDs, thus taking even longer to scan and backup.

It's absolutely not an exercise in tedium.

It’s actually quite easy to backup to a computer with which you aren’t synced/tethered. My iPhone backs up to the cloud, but when I want to make a local copy, all I do is plug it into to my computer, and click “backup now” under “Manually Backup and Restore”

Simple as that. This can also be configured to happen over the network.

Manual backup on a Pro device? I think you're missing the point.

Secondly, anyone who *still* trusts itunes not to randomly wipe their device at some point is on very thin ice.

Look, you clearly know nothing about the situation, so let's explain the options.

Option (a) - backup over the internet. This will back up to your iCloud storage. You may have to buy more storage. You may not. It depends on WHAT is stored on your iPad. Apple are not morons. Stuff that is reproducible from other sources (app binaries, most music, movies you bought from the Apple store) will not require iCloud storage. Likewise if you are already using Apple's shared photo library, then that storage won't count against your backups, and the same for your idiosyncratic music. Since I have no idea what any particular person plans to store on their iPad, I have nothing useful to say about how this might work for them.

Option (b) - backup over USB. This does NOT require hitting a button in iTunes. The way I have it configured, when I plug my iPhone into my iMac, it automatically backs up the iPhone (and syncs any other relevant changes from iTunes, like movies or music I added to iTunes).Is this a pain in the ass? Well I assume you plug in your phone to be charged every night. It's EXACTLY the same thing, except you plug into and charge via a Mac rather than a charger. It's hardly the soul-crushing pain that you claim it is --- and I have no idea what you mean by imagining that it will wipe out your device.The one issue here is how modern your Mac is. An older mac will charge iPhones overnight, but not iPads, because of limitations in the USB charging protocol. A new enough Mac should (I believe) charge iPads.

Option (c) - if you are one of the lucky people, you may manage to get your iPhone/iPad to sync and backup with iTunes over WiFi. This will then happen automatically when you plug it into the charger to charge overnight. No user involvement.

This WiFi sync technology has had a problematic history. The very first iteration was OK and usually worked. Over the years it became less reliable then better and around iOS 8 it was bullet-proof. Then with iOS 9 it was (so APple claims) rewritten to use Continuity (Apple's generic underlying cluster communication technology based on BT and WiFi) and in the process COMPLETELY FSCKED UP. I have NEVER had it work successfully since iOS 9, across multiple iOS devices and multiple iOS, macOS and iTunes updates.

I don't believe them when they claim they use Continuity, because everything else that uses Continuity works just fine. If they used Continuity properly it would work as slickly and reliably as aWatch/iPhone communication, or cross-device cut-and-paste, or answering phone calls on my Mac. They seem to have hired the stupidest engineer they could find and told him to go nuts with the WiFi sync code, randomly changing anything he felt like, for no reason.

So basically I can't in good conscience claim this as an option. Maybe it will work for you, who knows? But it doesn't work for me, or plenty of other people, and reporting this to Apple doesn't seem to get it fixed.

Christ, some people will do some absolute backflips to convince themselves Apple's SoCs can't really be THAT good.

It's not that, it's just with the OG "Pro" Anandtech found the Apple SoC to trail the first gen Macbook's Broadwell Core M. That's not bad, the Apple chip is "desktop class" as it trounced Atoms and traded blows with Core M. However, it was not faster as that version of Geekbench seemed to indicate.

If Anandtech would be so nice as to repeat the extensive comparison again, it's not unlikely that we'll find Geekbench numbers again slightly "biased by design" towards ARM.

What is the OG Pro?

The last serious test AnandTech did was with the A9 series CPUs. Nothing has been done against the A10s.

The AnandTech A9 tests (I assume you mean SPEC because your kind are obsessed with SPEC) were problematic because different compilers were used. I would not consider any such test definitive unless the same version of LLVM were used for both the x86 and the iOS compiles --- comparing what icc does vs what LLVM does is simply not interesting because icc is known to perform ridiculous and unrealistic code transformations to substantially boost its SPEC numbers, whereas LLVM has specifically stated that they are not interested in transformations that boost SPEC but have no relevance to any other code.

With a fourth core and the caches/bandwidth to sustain it, this would totally keep up! A 47 watt 4C/8T CPU from just a few years ago, now in a fanless ARM chip. That's nutty. Some people are understandably frustrated at the lack of performance gains in the high wattage segment, but where there are still big gains is bringing more power down to lower wattages.

It also seems to be a pretty fair foil for the 1499 Macbook Escape in the review charts, Intel must be watching that closely.

I /really/ want to see what an A10X could do with a heatsink and fan...

The premise that a CPU with lower power draw with larger transistors and less cache is the dominant performer across all tasks is absurd, and should be treated as absurd.

I think they would have moved the iPad Pro to running both MacOS and iOS software if it was *that* powerful. Also on board with the "it needs mouse support" crowd. In it's current iteration, the iPad Pro is just trying to get artists wanting a portable Cintiq + tablet back from the Surface Pro line. It's otherwise by definition, not a productivity device.

This is a silly analysis.

The ESSENTIAL difference between Mac and iOS is not the CPUs, or even the legacy software, it is that one presents a UI for indirect manpulation, one presents a UI for direct manipulation. That's the state of play right now, and given that fact, it makes no sense to run Mac software on an iPad -- it's like asking why HomePod can't run Apple TV apps.

+ MacOS likely will also switch to a new OS qua OS. The underlying OS really is starting to show its age (in things like how bad hardware can bring down the entire machine, in the way that multi-core can be used in only limited ways, in the security model). My guess is the work for this is being done today, but the ARM transition will happen first. Then a few years after the ARM transition the new OS (likely ARM-only) will be rolled out as the baseline OS-proper for the entire product line/

+ But neither of these address the issue of the UI. My guess is that Apple hasn't made a decision yet because the future is murky.

Clearly there ARE some tasks where direct manipulation feels far better and more appropriate than indirect manipulation. iOS for the win.

Just as clearly there ARE some tasks where indirect manipulation (and/or multiple large windows and multiple screens) are more or less essential. (Text entry on iOS is OK, text selection and editing suck. Some tasks, like large spread screens, or serious coding, a lot of video or 3D editing, or research+writing REALLY benefit from windows+large screens, and those in turn really need the indirect manipulation to avoid gorilla arm.)

Can these be unified? Can this be done without forcing the dev to write two different UIs? Can we get to where we want to be through something like an iPad Max (hah hah, pun!) that presents the direct manipulation UI in tablet mode, but can be plugged into three screens, and then presents windows like a Mac, and allows the use of a keyboard and track pad --- support for pointer, clicking, dragging, chording, all done automatically by the Apple frameworks and controls?MS is not an encouraging precedent. But then MS does lots of UI things badly and others then do them better...

HOWEVER all this may be moot! And that's why I say the future is murky.How serious is VR/AR? How soon does it arrive? For how long can one wear the relevant headgear (battery life? weight? eye strain? dorkiness around other people?)There ARE those (including serious companies) who believe that VR is SO all-encompassing that all this nonsense today of touch screens and trackpads is all going away soon, that the only way we'll be interacting with anything computation is via some form of VR/AR. I personally STRONGLY discount these sorts of claims. Almost always new technology AUGMENTS, it does not REPLACE, older technology. (Compare claims that tablets would replace desktops, watches replace phones, voice replace touch --- all idiotic.) So I see the intermediate (next 15..30 years or so) future as making use of everything from keyboards to touchscreens to voice to goggles all in appropriate situations.

But that doesn't change the fact that VR/AR UIs will be a whole new and very different space that Apple needs to explore. And if this UI method works well, and is as powerful as claimed, perfecting eyeOS make take all of Apple's best talent for the next few years, leaving little available to work in the near term on the question of the optimal balance and unification between direct and indirect manipulation. Which implies a short term future that's essentially like the past few years --- the best UI ideas that make sense move between macOS and iOS, but there's no grand theory of how they should be unified.

I think the issue is that "pro" tablets target users / use cases that oscillate between touch and pointer being better. Supporting only one is asinine, especially when so little work is required for "good enough" support - Android has it almost by accident.

To someone who already owns a MacBook (not MBP), what is the benefit from the iPad Pro, apart from the pencil/touchscreen? At this stage, the MacBook is almost the same size (easy to carry around anywhere and use on a plane) and you get the benefit of all the "full" versions of the software. As a non-creative professional who sees the pencil as a nice to have and non-essential, is there a benefit to an iPad Pro

Depends what you do. I read a LOT of technical PDFs, and doing so on my iPad (using GoodReader to categorize and sort through them all) is MUCH nicer than reading on a laptop because you can turn the tablet to portrait.Even watching movies (landscape) is much nicer because the keyboard does not get in the way. But I also do a lot of technical writing using LyX and no way would I do that on an iPad. (Even apart from the non-presence of LyX and TeX and Mathematica.) Serious text manipulation (selection and editing) is way too slow on an iPad, even with a hardware keyboard.

Don't drink the koolaid of the idiot internet. You don't have to have ONE device!!!Use whatever devices make sense to you. If a laptop is all you need, use that. If you also want to watch movies without a hassle, maybe an iPad Mini is a good fit for you? If you want to read PDFs easily, but it's not a large part of your life, maybe buy the cheap iPad 5?

Me, I care enough about my technical reading (and, actually, I HATE the judder of 24 or 48fps content presented at 60 fps) that it's a slam dunk. My little sister is getting my iPad Air 2 and I'm getting a Pro 10.5 in the next few days.

To someone who already owns a MacBook (not MBP), what is the benefit from the iPad Pro, apart from the pencil/touchscreen? At this stage, the MacBook is almost the same size (easy to carry around anywhere and use on a plane) and you get the benefit of all the "full" versions of the software. As a non-creative professional who sees the pencil as a nice to have and non-essential, is there a benefit to an iPad Pro

Depends what you do. I read a LOT of technical PDFs, and doing so on my iPad (using GoodReader to categorize and sort through them all) is MUCH nicer than reading on a laptop because you can turn the tablet to portrait.Even watching movies (landscape) is much nicer because the keyboard does not get in the way. But I also do a lot of technical writing using LyX and no way would I do that on an iPad. (Even apart from the non-presence of LyX and TeX and Mathematica.) Serious text manipulation (selection and editing) is way too slow on an iPad, even with a hardware keyboard.

Don't drink the koolaid of the idiot internet. You don't have to have ONE device!!!Use whatever devices make sense to you. If a laptop is all you need, use that. If you also want to watch movies without a hassle, maybe an iPad Mini is a good fit for you? If you want to read PDFs easily, but it's not a large part of your life, maybe buy the cheap iPad 5?

Me, I care enough about my technical reading (and, actually, I HATE the judder of 24 or 48fps content presented at 60 fps) that it's a slam dunk. My little sister is getting my iPad Air 2 and I'm getting a Pro 10.5 in the next few days.

With a fourth core and the caches/bandwidth to sustain it, this would totally keep up! A 47 watt 4C/8T CPU from just a few years ago, now in a fanless ARM chip. That's nutty. Some people are understandably frustrated at the lack of performance gains in the high wattage segment, but where there are still big gains is bringing more power down to lower wattages.

It also seems to be a pretty fair foil for the 1499 Macbook Escape in the review charts, Intel must be watching that closely.

I /really/ want to see what an A10X could do with a heatsink and fan...

The premise that a CPU with lower power draw with larger transistors and less cache is the dominant performer across all tasks is absurd, and should be treated as absurd.

I think they would have moved the iPad Pro to running both MacOS and iOS software if it was *that* powerful. Also on board with the "it needs mouse support" crowd. In it's current iteration, the iPad Pro is just trying to get artists wanting a portable Cintiq + tablet back from the Surface Pro line. It's otherwise by definition, not a productivity device.

This is a silly analysis.

The ESSENTIAL difference between Mac and iOS is not the CPUs, or even the legacy software, it is that one presents a UI for indirect manpulation, one presents a UI for direct manipulation. That's the state of play right now, and given that fact, it makes no sense to run Mac software on an iPad -- it's like asking why HomePod can't run Apple TV apps.

+ MacOS likely will also switch to a new OS qua OS. The underlying OS really is starting to show its age (in things like how bad hardware can bring down the entire machine, in the way that multi-core can be used in only limited ways, in the security model). My guess is the work for this is being done today, but the ARM transition will happen first. Then a few years after the ARM transition the new OS (likely ARM-only) will be rolled out as the baseline OS-proper for the entire product line/

+ But neither of these address the issue of the UI. My guess is that Apple hasn't made a decision yet because the future is murky.

Clearly there ARE some tasks where direct manipulation feels far better and more appropriate than indirect manipulation. iOS for the win.

Just as clearly there ARE some tasks where indirect manipulation (and/or multiple large windows and multiple screens) are more or less essential. (Text entry on iOS is OK, text selection and editing suck. Some tasks, like large spread screens, or serious coding, a lot of video or 3D editing, or research+writing REALLY benefit from windows+large screens, and those in turn really need the indirect manipulation to avoid gorilla arm.)

Can these be unified? Can this be done without forcing the dev to write two different UIs? Can we get to where we want to be through something like an iPad Max (hah hah, pun!) that presents the direct manipulation UI in tablet mode, but can be plugged into three screens, and then presents windows like a Mac, and allows the use of a keyboard and track pad --- support for pointer, clicking, dragging, chording, all done automatically by the Apple frameworks and controls?MS is not an encouraging precedent. But then MS does lots of UI things badly and others then do them better...

HOWEVER all this may be moot! And that's why I say the future is murky.How serious is VR/AR? How soon does it arrive? For how long can one wear the relevant headgear (battery life? weight? eye strain? dorkiness around other people?)There ARE those (including serious companies) who believe that VR is SO all-encompassing that all this nonsense today of touch screens and trackpads is all going away soon, that the only way we'll be interacting with anything computation is via some form of VR/AR. I personally STRONGLY discount these sorts of claims. Almost always new technology AUGMENTS, it does not REPLACE, older technology. (Compare claims that tablets would replace desktops, watches replace phones, voice replace touch --- all idiotic.) So I see the intermediate (next 15..30 years or so) future as making use of everything from keyboards to touchscreens to voice to goggles all in appropriate situations.

But that doesn't change the fact that VR/AR UIs will be a whole new and very different space that Apple needs to explore. And if this UI method works well, and is as powerful as claimed, perfecting eyeOS make take all of Apple's best talent for the next few years, leaving little available to work in the near term on the question of the optimal balance and unification between direct and indirect manipulation. Which implies a short term future that's essentially like the past few years --- the best UI ideas that make sense move between macOS and iOS, but there's no grand theory of how they should be unified.

I think the issue is that "pro" tablets target users / use cases that oscillate being touch and pointer being better. Supporting only one is asinine, especially when so little work is required for "good enough" support - Android has it almost by accident.

Is this true? You're making a strong claim and I have seen no evidence for it. Since I don't engage in these sorts of tasks I have no opinion, but I am naturally skeptical when Joe Random Internet User claims that he has an obvious solution to all the world's problems that Apple has been too stupid to see.

I'd note, for example, that in spite of your claims re Android, what I see in real life (even among my Android-loving friends) and on the internet is a general disdain for Android tablets, a disdain matched by the sales numbers. If this touch+mouse support were so valuable and worked well enough, I'd expect to at least see a vocal contingent, like the Surface Pro crowd, constantly ranting about how great their solution was compared to everything else...

To someone who already owns a MacBook (not MBP), what is the benefit from the iPad Pro, apart from the pencil/touchscreen? At this stage, the MacBook is almost the same size (easy to carry around anywhere and use on a plane) and you get the benefit of all the "full" versions of the software. As a non-creative professional who sees the pencil as a nice to have and non-essential, is there a benefit to an iPad Pro

Depends what you do. I read a LOT of technical PDFs, and doing so on my iPad (using GoodReader to categorize and sort through them all) is MUCH nicer than reading on a laptop because you can turn the tablet to portrait.Even watching movies (landscape) is much nicer because the keyboard does not get in the way. But I also do a lot of technical writing using LyX and no way would I do that on an iPad. (Even apart from the non-presence of LyX and TeX and Mathematica.) Serious text manipulation (selection and editing) is way too slow on an iPad, even with a hardware keyboard.

Don't drink the koolaid of the idiot internet. You don't have to have ONE device!!!Use whatever devices make sense to you. If a laptop is all you need, use that. If you also want to watch movies without a hassle, maybe an iPad Mini is a good fit for you? If you want to read PDFs easily, but it's not a large part of your life, maybe buy the cheap iPad 5?

Me, I care enough about my technical reading (and, actually, I HATE the judder of 24 or 48fps content presented at 60 fps) that it's a slam dunk. My little sister is getting my iPad Air 2 and I'm getting a Pro 10.5 in the next few days.

Does one really need a $600+ iPad to read PDFs and watch movies ?

Which is why I suggested that those people buy a freaking iPad 5...Is it really so hard to read the ENTIRE comment before responding?

I'd note, for example, that in spite of your claims re Android, what I see in real life (even among my Android-loving friends) and on the internet is a general disdain for Android tablets, a disdain matched by the sales numbers. If this touch+mouse support were so valuable and worked well enough, I'd expect to at least see a vocal contingent, like the Surface Pro crowd, constantly ranting about how great their solution was compared to everything else...

Also makes you wonder why Google and Samsung would release something like the Pixel tablet or Tab S3 with a keyboard, and not include a trackpad of some sort. Would seem obvious if Android’s mouse support were already working well.

I noticed something messing with my iPad Pro and external keyboard- the two finger “cursor trackpad” mode on the soft keyboard also works while the keyboard is hidden and using a hardware keyboard- but only (in my experience with a few) in Apple’s apps. Example Notes, Pages. I wonder if this is a private API of some sort, or if all of the third party apps I tried are using sufficiently custom UITextFields (or whatever) that they can’t support the trackpad mode this way and it can only be done through the software keyboard...

I'd note, for example, that in spite of your claims re Android, what I see in real life (even among my Android-loving friends) and on the internet is a general disdain for Android tablets, a disdain matched by the sales numbers. If this touch+mouse support were so valuable and worked well enough, I'd expect to at least see a vocal contingent, like the Surface Pro crowd, constantly ranting about how great their solution was compared to everything else...

Also makes you wonder why Google and Samsung would release something like the Pixel tablet or Tab S3 with a keyboard, and not include a trackpad of some sort. Would seem obvious if Android’s mouse support were already working well.

I noticed something messing with my iPad Pro and external keyboard- the two finger “cursor trackpad” mode on the soft keyboard also works while the keyboard is hidden and using a hardware keyboard- but only (in my experience with a few) in Apple’s apps. Example Notes, Pages. I wonder if this is a private API of some sort, or if all of the third party apps I tried are using sufficiently custom UITextFields (or whatever) that they can’t support the trackpad mode this way and it can only be done through the software keyboard...

With such a smaller tablet screen - and therefore, a small size for a companion keyboard - I can forgive the lack of trackpad since that would make the keyboard even more cramped.